Tools don't matter. Use what is comfortable and don't listen to all the brand, OS, editor and tabs/spaces crap. They all do the job and you will find the right ones once you really understand what you are doing. "Tools can be just a way to procrastinate". If you become tool agnostic you can do the job no matter the environment.

!rant

After over 20 years as a Software Engineer, Architect, and Manager, I want to pass along some unsolicited advice to junior developers either because I grew through it, or I've had to deal with developers who behaved poorly:

1) Your ego will hurt you FAR more than your junior coding skills. Nobody expects you to be the best early in your career, so don't act like you are.

2) Working independently is a must. It's okay to ask questions, but ask sparingly. Remember, mid and senior level guys need to focus just as much as you do, so before interrupting them, exhaust your resources (Google, Stack Overflow, books, etc..)

3) Working code != good code. You are an author. Write your code so that it can be read. Accept criticism that may seem trivial such as renaming a variable or method. If someone is suggesting it, it's because they didn't know what it did without further investigation.

4) Ask for peer reviews and LISTEN to the critique. Even after 20+ years, I send my code to more junior developers and often get good corrections sent back. (remember the ego thing from tip #1?) Even if they have no critiques for me, sometimes they will see a technique I used and learn from that. Peer reviews are win-win-win.

5) When in doubt, do NOT BS your way out. Refer to someone who knows, or offer to get back to them. Often times, persons other than engineers will take what you said as gospel. If that later turns out to be wrong, a bunch of people will have to get involved to clean up the expectations.

6) Slow down in order to speed up. Always start a task by thinking about the very high level use cases, then slowly work through your logic to achieve that. Rushing to complete, even for senior engineers, usually means less-than-ideal code that somebody will have to maintain.

7) Write documentation, always! Even if your company doesn't take documentation seriously, other engineers will remember how well documented your code is, and they will appreciate you for it/think of you next time that sweet job opens up.

8) Good code is important, but good impressions are better. I have code that is the most embarrassing crap ever still in production to this day. People don't think of me as "that shitty developer who wrote that ugly ass code that one time a decade ago," They think of me as "that developer who was fun to work with and busted his ass." Because of that, I've never been unemployed for more than a day. It's critical to have a good network and good references.

9) Don't shy away from the unknown. It's easy to hope somebody else picks up that task that you don't understand, but you wont learn it if they do. The daunting, unknown tasks are the most rewarding to complete (and trust me, other devs will notice.)

10) Learning is up to you. I can't tell you the number of engineers I passed on hiring because their answer to what they know about PHP7 was: "Nothing. I haven't learned it yet because my current company is still using PHP5." This is YOUR craft. It's not up to your employer to keep you relevant in the job market, it's up to YOU. You don't always need to be a pro at the latest and greatest, but at least read the changelog. Stay abreast of current technology, security threats, etc...

These are just a few quick tips from my experience. Others may chime in with theirs, and some may dispute mine. I wish you all fruitful careers!

Without words.

Co Worker: "Your computer is missing a mouse!"
Me: "I require less dependencies to use a computer"

BBUUUURRRRNN

A young guy I work with burst into tears today, I had no idea what happened so I tried to comfort him and ask what was up.

It appears his main client had gone nuts with him because they wanted him to make an internet toolbar (think Ask.com) and he politely informed them toolbars doesn't really exist anymore and it wouldn't work on things like modern browsers or mobile devices.

Being given a polite but honest opinion was obviously something the client wasn't used to and knowing the guy was a young and fairly inexperienced, they started throwing very personal insults and asking him exactly what he knows about things (a lot more than them).

So being the big, bold, handsome senior developer I am, I immediately phoned the client back and told them to either come speak to me face-to-face and apologise to him in person or we'd terminate there contract with immediate effect. They're coming down tomorrow...

So part my rant, part a rant on behalf of a young developer who did nothing wrong and was treated like shit, I think we've all been there.

We'll see how this goes! Who the hell wants a toolbar anyway?!

Me: 1 is something, 0 is nothing, NULL is the absence of things
JuniorDev: wut
Me: You've got pizza in a box, that's 1. If there's no pizza in the box, that's 0. If there's no pizza and no box, that's NULL.
JuniorDev: OOH so there's no object to reference if I ask for a slice!
Me: *small tear*

Always explain things in terms of pizza. Always.

First laugh then comment 😂😂😂

What only relying on JavaScript for HTML form input validation looks like

FUCK PEOPLE WHO INDENT LIKE THIS YOU MAKE ME SICK

Not a rant, but that feeling when you are closing all the chrome tabs after solving a bug 😇

One day when I was about 8 years old my friend and I were in the library. We decided we wanted to try to make a baseball website because we both likes baseball (this was around 1998). We picked up a book on HTML and my dad took it out for us. My dad was also a programmer so he said he would help us learn. We went home that afternoon and made a little website!

I knew right then that I really enjoyed programming and creating things with code, but I realized I wanted to be a programmer in middle school and high school. One of my friends and I started building Flash games. To see if people were playing them, I added in a call to each game that hit a PHP script on our server. I'll never forget the days/weeks that one of our most popular games caused our sever to get hammered and our shared host said they were going to boot us.

It was an awesome feeling knowing people were enjoying these games that we worked really hard on, and that's one of the main reasons I always wanted to be coding/creating things that people enjoy using.

All the time everywhere.

Am I the only one who hates the idea of using CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc) to build websites?

Insert name.

António

The name can only contain letters.

Antonio

Name not found.

Where did you two meet??😇😇😇

I was looking through some code I wrote 10-15 years ago. Seriously, WTF? Makes me want to invent a time machine to go back in time and punch myself in the face.

Well guy has some trust issues

HTML + CSS